The Impact of Parenting Classes on Incarcerated Mothers

With growing public attention to the problem of mass incarceration, many individuals want to know about the vast rise in women’s incarceration rate; particularly concerning, the increase of mothers in prison. For many mothers, the only source of hope and motivation they have while involved in the criminal justice system is the connection with their children. This article demonstrates that educational programs focusing on parenting can help incarcerated mothers renew their parental role upon release from prison. The target audience for this article includes, but is not limited to, correctional facility administrators, family counselors, educators, and anyone with an interest in parenting after prison. This article can also serve as a platform to advocate for quality parenting classes for incarcerated mothers

Increasing dominance of large lianas in Amazonian forests

Ecological orthodoxy suggests that old-growth forests should be close to dynamic equilibrium, but this view has been challenged by recent findings that neotropical forests are accumulating carbon and biomass, possibly in response to the increasing atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide. However, it is unclear whether the recent increase in tree biomass has been accompanied by a shift in community composition. Such changes could reduce or enhance the carbon storage potential of old-growth forests in the long term. Here we show that non-fragmented Amazon forests are experiencing a concerted increase in the density, basal area and mean size of woody climbing plants (lianas). Over the last two decades of the twentieth century the dominance of large lianas relative to trees has increased by 1.7–4.6% a year. Lianas enhance tree mortality and suppress tree growth, so their rapid increase implies that the tropical terrestrial carbon sink may shut down sooner than current models suggest. Predictions of future tropical carbon fluxes will need to account for the changing composition and dynamics of supposedly undisturbed forests

Larger and denser: an optimal design for surface grids of EMG electrodes to identify greater and more representative samples of motor units

The spinal motor neurons are the only neural cells whose individual activity can be non-invasively identified. This is usually done using grids of surface electromyographic (EMG) electrodes and source separation algorithms; an approach called EMG decomposition. In this study, we combined computational and experimental analyses to assess how the design parameters of grids of electrodes influence the number and the properties of the identified motor units. We first computed the percentage of motor units that could be theoretically discriminated within a pool of 200 simulated motor units when decomposing EMG signals recorded with grids of various sizes and interelectrode distances (IED). Increasing the density, the number of electrodes, and the size of the grids, increased the number of motor units that our decomposition algorithm could theoretically discriminate, i.e., up to 83.5% of the simulated pool (range across conditions: 30.5-83.5%). We then identified motor units from experimental EMG signals recorded in six participants with grids of various sizes (range: 2-36 cm2) and IED (range: 4-16 mm). The configuration with the largest number of electrodes and the shortest IED maximized the number of identified motor units (56±14; range: 39-79) and the percentage of early recruited motor units within these samples (29±14%). Finally, the number of identified motor units further increased with a prototyped grid of 256 electrodes and an IED of 2 mm. Taken together, our results showed that larger and denser surface grids of electrodes allow to identify a more representative pool of motor units than currently reported in experimental studies.Significance StatementThe application of source separation methods to multi-channel EMG signals recorded with grids of electrodes enables users to accurately identify the activity of individual motor units. However, the design parameters of these grids have never been discussed. They are usually arbitrarily fixed, often based on commercial availability. Here, we showed that using larger and denser grids of electrodes than conventionally proposed drastically increases the number of identified motor units. The samples of identified units are more balanced between early- and late-recruited motor units. Thus, these grids provide a more representative sampling of the active motor unit population. Gathering large datasets of motor units using large and dense grids will impact the study of motor control, neuromuscular modelling, and human-machine interfacing

Facilitating return to work through early specialist health-based interventions (FRESH): protocol for a feasibility randomised controlled trial

Background Over one million people sustain traumatic brain injury each year in the UK and more than 10 % of these are moderate or severe injuries, resulting in cognitive and psychological problems that affect the ability to work. Returning to work is a primary rehabilitation goal but fewer than half of traumatic brain injury survivors achieve this. Work is a recognised health service outcome, yet UK service provision varies widely and there is little robust evidence to inform rehabilitation practice. A single-centre cohort comparison suggested better work outcomes may be achieved through early occupational therapy targeted at job retention. This study aims to determine whether this intervention can be delivered in three new trauma centres and to conduct a feasibility, randomised controlled trial to determine whether its effects and cost effectiveness can be measured to inform a definitive trial. Methods/design Mixed methods study, including feasibility randomised controlled trial, embedded qualitative studies and feasibility economic evaluation will recruit 102 people with traumatic brain injury and their nominated carers from three English UK National Health Service (NHS) trauma centres. Participants will be randomised to receive either usual NHS rehabilitation or usual rehabilitation plus early specialist traumatic brain injury vocational rehabilitation delivered by an occupational therapist. The primary objective is to assess the feasibility of conducting a definitive trial; secondary objectives include measurement of protocol integrity (inclusion/exclusion criteria, intervention adherence, reasons for non-adherence) recruitment rate, the proportion of eligible patients recruited, reasons for non-recruitment, spectrum of TBI severity, proportion of and reasons for loss to follow-up, completeness of data collection, gains in face-to-face Vs postal data collection and the most appropriate methods of measuring primary outcomes (return to work, retention) to determine the sample size for a larger trial. Discussion To our knowledge, this is the first feasibility randomised controlled trial of a vocational rehabilitation health intervention specific to traumatic brain injury. The results will inform the design of a definitive trial

Entropic Tension in Crowded Membranes

Unlike their model membrane counterparts, biological membranes are richly decorated with a heterogeneous assembly of membrane proteins. These proteins are so tightly packed that their excluded area interactions can alter the free energy landscape controlling the conformational transitions suffered by such proteins. For membrane channels, this effect can alter the critical membrane tension at which they undergo a transition from a closed to an open state, and therefore influence protein function \emph{in vivo}. Despite their obvious importance, crowding phenomena in membranes are much less well studied than in the cytoplasm. Using statistical mechanics results for hard disk liquids, we show that crowding induces an entropic tension in the membrane, which influences transitions that alter the projected area and circumference of a membrane protein. As a specific case study in this effect, we consider the impact of crowding on the gating properties of bacterial mechanosensitive membrane channels, which are thought to confer osmoprotection when these cells are subjected to osmotic shock. We find that crowding can alter the gating energies by more than $2\;k_BT$ in physiological conditions, a substantial fraction of the total gating energies in some cases. Given the ubiquity of membrane crowding, the nonspecific nature of excluded volume interactions, and the fact that the function of many membrane proteins involve significant conformational changes, this specific case study highlights a general aspect in the function of membrane proteins.Comment: 20 pages (inclduing supporting information), 4 figures, to appear in PLoS Comp. Bio

How a Diverse Research Ecosystem Has Generated New Rehabilitation Technologies: Review of NIDILRR’s Rehabilitation Engineering Research Centers

Over 50 million United States citizens (1 in 6 people in the US) have a developmental, acquired, or degenerative disability. The average US citizen can expect to live 20% of his or her life with a disability. Rehabilitation technologies play a major role in improving the quality of life for people with a disability, yet widespread and highly challenging needs remain. Within the US, a major effort aimed at the creation and evaluation of rehabilitation technology has been the Rehabilitation Engineering Research Centers (RERCs) sponsored by the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research. As envisioned at their conception by a panel of the National Academy of Science in 1970, these centers were intended to take a “total approach to rehabilitation”, combining medicine, engineering, and related science, to improve the quality of life of individuals with a disability. Here, we review the scope, achievements, and ongoing projects of an unbiased sample of 19 currently active or recently terminated RERCs. Specifically, for each center, we briefly explain the needs it targets, summarize key historical advances, identify emerging innovations, and consider future directions. Our assessment from this review is that the RERC program indeed involves a multidisciplinary approach, with 36 professional fields involved, although 70% of research and development staff are in engineering fields, 23% in clinical fields, and only 7% in basic science fields; significantly, 11% of the professional staff have a disability related to their research. We observe that the RERC program has substantially diversified the scope of its work since the 1970’s, addressing more types of disabilities using more technologies, and, in particular, often now focusing on information technologies. RERC work also now often views users as integrated into an interdependent society through technologies that both people with and without disabilities co-use (such as the internet, wireless communication, and architecture). In addition, RERC research has evolved to view users as able at improving outcomes through learning, exercise, and plasticity (rather than being static), which can be optimally timed. We provide examples of rehabilitation technology innovation produced by the RERCs that illustrate this increasingly diversifying scope and evolving perspective. We conclude by discussing growth opportunities and possible future directions of the RERC program

The Role of Inbreeding in the Extinction of a European Royal Dynasty

The kings of the Spanish Habsburg dynasty (1516–1700) frequently married close relatives in such a way that uncle-niece, first cousins and other consanguineous unions were prevalent in that dynasty. In the historical literature, it has been suggested that inbreeding was a major cause responsible for the extinction of the dynasty when the king Charles II, physically and mentally disabled, died in 1700 and no children were born from his two marriages, but this hypothesis has not been examined from a genetic perspective. In this article, this hypothesis is checked by computing the inbreeding coefficient (F) of the Spanish Habsburg kings from an extended pedigree up to 16 generations in depth and involving more than 3,000 individuals. The inbreeding coefficient of the Spanish Habsburg kings increased strongly along generations from 0.025 for king Philip I, the founder of the dynasty, to 0.254 for Charles II and several members of the dynasty had inbreeding coefficients higher than 0.20. In addition to inbreeding due to unions between close relatives, ancestral inbreeding from multiple remote ancestors makes a substantial contribution to the inbreeding coefficient of most kings. A statistically significant inbreeding depression for survival to 10 years is detected in the progenies of the Spanish Habsburg kings. The results indicate that inbreeding at the level of first cousin (F = 0.0625) exerted an adverse effect on survival of 17.8%±12.3. It is speculated that the simultaneous occurrence in Charles II (F = 0.254) of two different genetic disorders: combined pituitary hormone deficiency and distal renal tubular acidosis, determined by recessive alleles at two unlinked loci, could explain most of the complex clinical profile of this king, including his impotence/infertility which in last instance led to the extinction of the dynasty

An archival case study : revisiting the life and political economy of Lauchlin Currie

This paper forms part of a wider project to show the significance of archival material on distinguished economists, in this case Lauchlin Currie (1902-93), who studied and taught at Harvard before entering government service at the US Treasury and Federal Reserve Board as the intellectual leader of Roosevelt's New Deal, 1934-39, as FDR's White House economic adviser in peace and war, 1939-45, and as a post-war development economist. It discusses the uses made of the written and oral material available when the author was writing his intellectual biography of Currie (Duke University Press 1990) while Currie was still alive, and the significance of the material that has come to light after Currie's death

Control of microwave signals using circuit nano-electromechanics

Waveguide resonators are crucial elements in sensitive astrophysical detectors [1] and circuit quantum electrodynamics (cQED) [2]. Coupled to artificial atoms in the form of superconducting qubits [3, 4], they now provide a technologically promising and scalable platform for quantum information processing tasks [2, 5-8]. Coupling these circuits, in situ, to other quantum systems, such as molecules [9, 10], spin ensembles [11, 12], quantum dots [13] or mechanical oscillators [14, 15] has been explored to realize hybrid systems with extended functionality. Here, we couple a superconducting coplanar waveguide resonator to a nano-coshmechanical oscillator, and demonstrate all-microwave field controlled slowing, advancing and switching of microwave signals. This is enabled by utilizing electromechanically induced transparency [16-18], an effect analogous to electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) in atomic physics [19]. The exquisite temporal control gained over this phenomenon provides a route towards realizing advanced protocols for storage of both classical and quantum microwave signals [20-22], extending the toolbox of control techniques of the microwave field.Comment: 9 figure

A novel isolator-based system promotes viability of human embryos during laboratory processing

In vitro fertilisation (IVF) and related technologies are arguably the most challenging of all cell culture applications. The starting material is a single cell from which one aims to produce an embryo capable of establishing a pregnancy eventually leading to a live birth. Laboratory processing during IVF treatment requires open manipulations of gametes and embryos, which typically involves exposure to ambient conditions. To reduce the risk of cellular stress, we have developed a totally enclosed system of interlinked isolator-based workstations designed to maintain oocytes and embryos in a physiological environment throughout the IVF process. Comparison of clinical and laboratory data before and after the introduction of the new system revealed that significantly more embryos developed to the blastocyst stage in the enclosed isolator-based system compared with conventional open-fronted laminar flow hoods. Moreover, blastocysts produced in the isolator-based system contained significantly more cells and their development was accelerated. Consistent with this, the introduction of the enclosed system was accompanied by a significant increase in the clinical pregnancy rate and in the proportion of embryos implanting following transfer to the uterus. The data indicate that protection from ambient conditions promotes improved development of human embryos. Importantly, we found that it was entirely feasible to conduct all IVF-related procedures in the isolator-based workstations